East Africa: In Search of National and Regional Renewal

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa(CODESRIA) is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. It will berecalled that the Council was established in 1973 out of the collectivewill of African social researchers to create a viable forum in Africathrough which they could strive to transcend all barriers to knowledgeproduction and, in so doing, play a critical role in the democraticdevelopment of the continent. As part of the series of events planned tomark the anniversary, five sub-regional conferences are beingorganised in Central, East, North, Southern and West Africa. Thesesub-regional conferences will be followed by a grand finale conferenceto be held at the Council’s headquarters in Dakar, Senegal, inDecember 2003. The East Africa sub-regional conference will takeplace in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 30 and 31 October, 2003. Thetheme of the conference will be: East Africa: In Search of Nationaland Regional Renewal.

The East African sub-region presents an interesting mix of experienceswhich, both historically and contemporaneously, have been at the heartof some of the main pre-occupations of African nationalists and thequest for the realisation of the pan-African ideal. Established inArchaeological research as the place of origin of human kind, the subregionis significant in African history in several other important respects.It is home to the only African country – Ethiopia – that escaped directcolonial rule and whose resistance to Italian military invasion was afactor which was significant in galvanising the African resistance toforeign domination. Precisely for this reason, Addis Ababa was easilydesignated the headquarters of the Organisation of African Unity when itwas established and, as a consequence, the sub-region has played hostto some of the most important moments in the post-independenceAfrican quest for collective action. Furthermore, several of the leadinggiants of African nationalism, as well as some of the boldestexperiments in seeking to give content to independence wereundertaken in East Africa. In this connection, the personal example ofMwalimu Julius Nyerere and the attempts which he made to concretisethe ideals of African nationalism through the promotion of theAfricanisation of the structures of governance, the adoption of Swahili asthe official language of Tanzania, the sensitisation of the populace to themerits and imperatives of self-reliance, the investment of energies intothe building of the East Africa Community, the unwavering support heoffered to the liberation struggles in Southern Africa, and the launchingof the Ujamaa programme are perhaps the most consistent andoutstanding. And yet, the experiment in African socialism which Nyerereembraced was not the only path that was followed in East Africa;Tanzania’s immediate neighbour, Kenya, led by another giant of Africannationalism and a veteran of the Mau Mau resistance to British rule,opted for a completely different approach which consisted essentially ofthe adoption of a private capitalist system of development with a strongaccent on a major role for foreign private investors. Ethiopia was, for along time, governed by a hereditary monarchy until Haile Selasie’s rulewas ended by a military take over that occurred on the back of popularprotests; the monarchy was abolished and the country wassubsequently proclaimed a Marxist state. In sum, all of the countries ofthe sub-region had regime types that spanned the ideological spectrumand, in some cases, such as Siad Barre’s Somalia, involved officialswings from one ideological framework to another in line with theexigencies of political survival and shifting Cold War alliances.

Whether colonised or not, and irrespective of the ideological and policychoices which they made, all of the countries of East Africa facednumerous and broadly similar challenges of nation-building and socioeconomicdevelopment. These problems were not eased by the variousburdens of history that played an important part in shaping domesticpolitical alliances in contexts which are highly pluralistic – especiallyalong ethnic and religious lines – and which exhibited significant levelsof social polarisation. As a consequence, the sub-region was exposedto major conflicts both of an inter-state and intra-state nature thatimplicated virtually all the countries in the area. The worst of theseconflicts have been played out in Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Sudan,Somalia, Djibouti, the Zanzibari component of Tanzania, and theComoros. While the roots of the conflicts are varied and may be open todebate, their consequences have, however, been the same across thesub-region and have consisted of a reinforcement of politicalauthoritarianism, a widening of the gulf between state and society, theexacerbation of social inequalities and a widespread disruption ofeconomic activities. The weakening of states by prolonged conflicts hasalso been experienced, even as several of the countries succumbed tomilitary rule. In all cases, de facto and de jure single party rule wasimposed in one form or the other at some point after the achievement ofindependence. It was only in the period from the1980s onwards thatconcerted pressure, mainly from social movements, began to pushmajority of the regimes in power towards a reform of the political space.As in the rest of Africa, much of the reform effort consisted of theadoption or re-introduction of multi-party politics, the most significantexception being Uganda under Museveni and the so-called “movementsystem” on the basis of which the NRM has exercised power. Politicaldecentralisation exercises and efforts at constitutional reform have alsobeen undertaken, including the ethno-regionalist federalist modelintroduced in Ethiopia after the fall of the Dergue. Furthermore, therehas been a revival of interest in the sub-region in the re-birth ofcooperation and integration processes aimed at promoting commoninter-state objectives and seeking shared solutions.

An overview of the challenges facing East Africa would suggest that inthe main, these centre around :

the accommodation and management ofdiversity; the re-thinking of citizenship in the framework of a renewedsocial contract between state and society; the expansion of the base forsocial inclusion, including especially the rural and urban working poor; the promotion of a civic culture underpinned by basic democratic rightsand which pays particular attention to disaffected youth; the revitalisationof associational life in a direction that strengthens popular democraticparticipation; the restoration of a developmental agenda to the policyprocess; the promotion of an all-round project of regionalisation; theencouragement of the further opening up of the political space to allowfor the exaction of greater accountability; and the rebuilding of the stateand the policy process in an environment of peace and stability.

Thesechallenges lie at the heart of the quest for national and sub-regionalrenewal; the extent to which they are achieved will also be crucial to therealisation of the ideals of autonomous development and social justicethat, in the first place, fired African nationalism and the pan-Africanmovement. The East Africa sub-regional conference which is beingconvened by CODESRIA within the framework of its 30th anniversarycelebrations will be devoted to an exploration of different dimensionsof the challenges of renewal confronting the countries in the area. Thiswould be done in a manner which does not neglect the weak pointsand/or blind spots of the theory and practice of African nationalism andwhich also takes full cognisance of the changed contexts and conditionsthat shape the African world today. Papers will be welcomed reflectingon different dimensions of these challenges, the various strands ofreform and renewal which are being pursued and their potentiality forestablishing the foundations for the emergence of an inclusive, democraticand developmental state system. Contributions on alternative readingsof the problems confronting the sub-region and alternative approachesto meeting these challenges will also be strongly encouraged.